The Hanging Gardens of … Nineveh? The Hanging Gardens of … Nineveh? Blame it on a bad translation. This ancient wonder may not have been in Babylon. View Images A man stands near the massive walls of Nineveh. Photograph by Randy Olson, National Geographic The legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon are exactly that: legendary. And they may not have been located in Babylon. Related Content A Local's Guide to Tokyo The gardens, famous as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, were, according to Stephanie Dalley, an Oxford University Assyriologist, located some 340 miles north of ancient Babylon in Nineveh, on the Tigris River by Mosul in modern Iraq. Dalley, whose book The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon will be published later this summer, writes that earlier sources were translated incorrectly, leading to the confusion. The misinterpretation also explains why years of excavations never yielded any credible evidence of the fabled gardens in Babylon, the capital city of Babylonia on the Euphrates River. Historians have questioned their existence for some time.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon: The Mysterious Wonder of the Ancient World (Article) - Ancient History Encyclopedia by writer873 published on 18 January 2012 The Hanging Gardens of Babylon evoke a romantic picture of lush greenery and colorful flowers cascading from the sky. The grandeur of their sight must have been awe-inspiring, which is why Herodotus would have considered them one of his Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. However, not only are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon not standing today, but their entire existence is debated. Because of the lack of documentation of them in the chronicles of Babylonian history, many doubt they were ever there. They may have been merely a figment of ancient imaginations, a story to be told in the annals of ancient myth and history. Purpose In ancient writings the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were first described by Berossus, a Chaldaean priest who lived in the late 4th century BCE. In his book Babyloniaca, written around 280 BCE, he describes the gardens and attributes them to the great Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II .

Many other Greek historians went on to provide detailed descriptions of the gardens, citing either Berossus' work, or from accounts of other ancients. Advertisement Nebuchadnezzar had the Hanging Gardens built around 600 BCE for his wife Amytis. According to these ancient sources, Nebuchadnezzar had the Hanging Gardens built around 600 BCE for his wife Amytis. Amytis was originally from Media, and had married Nebuchadnezzar in an arrangement to further political ambitions, which was not uncommon for the time. Amyitis was homesick for her verdant and mountainous home, and quite depressed living in the flat and arid Babylon. Thus an elaborate garden was constructed to replicate her lush homeland and cheer her up. Design The Hanging Gardens did not actually hang at all. They were made up of a simulated mountain with rooftop gardens. They would have likely been multi-level terraces supported by baked brick columns. These columns would have been filled with dirt to allow large plantings and trees to root and grow. The effect of the plants hanging down over the years likely gave the effect of a lush mountain landscape, seemingly hanging in mid-air. It would have been spectacular to behold.

Archaeological Excavations Recent archaeological excavations of the palace in Iraq have uncovered evidence of a building with vaults and a well (for irrigation?) nearby. However, the location of the palace complex contradicts where Greek historians placed the Hanging Gardens, which was on the banks of the Euphrates River. The palace excavations are simply too far away. There is promising news, though. There have been recent excavations on the banks of the Euphrates River of some substantial 25 meter-thick walls. Could these have been part of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Remove Ads Advertisement Though some believe that the Hanging Gardens never existed, it is not outside of the realm of possibility that they were real. The technology of the time would have allowed for their construction. That does not explain the lack of contemporary documentation, however. But why would later historians spend so much time describing this masterpiece of ancient history if it did not exist in at least some physical form? Help us write more We're a small non-profit organisation run by a handful of volunteers. Each article costs us about $50 in history books as source material, plus editing and server costs.

You can help us create even more free articles for as little as $5 per month , and we'll give you an ad-free experience to thank you! Become a Member Bibliography Sevens Wonders of the Ancient World - Ancient History - HISTORY.com Sevens Wonders of the Ancient World Sevens Wonders of the Ancient World Author Sevens Wonders of the Ancient World URL A+E Networks Introduction The amazing works of art and architecture known as the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World serve as a testament to the ingenuity, imagination and sheer hard work of which human beings are capable. They are also, however, reminders of the human capacity for disagreement, destruction and, possibly, embellishment. As soon as ancient writers compiled a list of “seven wonders,” it became fodder for debate over which achievements deserved inclusion. Ultimately, human hands joined with natural forces to destroy all but one of the wonders. Furthermore, it is possible that at least one of the wonders might not have existed at all. Still, all seven continue to inspire and be celebrated as the remarkable products of the creativity and skill of Earth’s early civilizations.

Google Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt The Great Pyramids, located at Giza on the west bank of the Nile River north of Cairo, are the only wonder of the ancient world that has survived to the present day. The three pyramids–Khufu (Cheops), Khafra (Chephren) and Menkaura (Mycerimus)–were built between 2700 B.C. and 2500 B.C. as royal tombs. The largest and most impressive is Khufu, which covers 13 acres and is believed to contain more than 2 million stone blocks that weigh from two to 30 tons each. For more than 4,000 years, Khufu reigned as the tallest building in the world. In fact, it took modern man until the 19th century to build a taller structure. Amazingly, the nearly symmetrical pyramids were built without the aid of modern tools or surveying equipment. Scientists believe that the Egyptians used log rollers and sledges to move the stones into place. The sloped walls, which were intended to mimic the rays of Ra, the sun god, were originally built as steps, and then filled in with limestone.

The interior of the pyramids included narrow corridors and hidden chambers in an unsuccessful attempt to foil grave robbers. Although modern archeologists have found some great treasures among the ruins, they believe most of what the pyramids once contained was looted within 250 years of their completion. Did You Know? The Colossus of Rhodes was an inspiration for the Statue of Liberty. Hanging Gardens of Babylon According to ancient Greek poets, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built near the Euphrates River in modern-day Iraq by the Babylonian king Nebuchadrezzar II around 600 B.C. The gardens were said to have been planted as high as 75 feet in the air on a huge square brick terrace that was laid out in steps like a theater. The king allegedly built the towering gardens to ease his lover Amytis’ homesickness for the natural beauty of her home in Media (the northwestern part of modern-day Iran). Later writers described how people could walk underneath the beautiful gardens, which rested on tall stone columns.

Modern scientists have deduced that for the gardens to survive they would have had to be irrigated using a system consisting of a pump, waterwheel and cisterns to carry water from the Euphrates many feet into the air. Though there are multiple accounts of the gardens in both Greek and Roman literature, none of them are firsthand, and no mention of the gardens has been found in Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions. As a result, most modern scholars believe that the existence of the gardens was part of an inspired and widely believed but still fictional tale. Statue of Zeus at Olympia The famed statue of Zeus was crafted by the Athenian sculptor Phidias and completed and placed in the temple of Zeus at Olympia, site of the ancient Olympics, around the mid-fifth century B.C. The statue depicted the god of thunder seated bare-chested at a wooden throne. Holding up the thrones’ armrests were two carved sphinxes, mythical creatures with the head and chest of a woman, the body of lion and the wings of a bird. The statue of Zeus was richly decorated with gold and ivory. At 40 feet, it was so tall that its head nearly touched the top of the temple.

According to legend, the sculptor Phidias asked Zeus for a sign of his approval after finishing the statue; soon after, the temple was struck by lightning. The Zeus statue graced the temple at Olympia for more than eight centuries before Christian priests persuaded the Roman emperor to close the temple in the fourth century A.D. At that time, the statue was moved to a temple in Constantinople, where it is believed to have been destroyed in a fire in the year 462. Temple of Artemis at Ephesus There was actually more than one Temple of Artemis: A series of several altars and temples was destroyed and then restored on the same site in Ephesus, a Greek port city on the west coast of modern-day Turkey. The most fabulous of these structures were two marble temples built around 550 B.C. and 350 B.C., respectively. The former was designed by the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes and decorated by some of the most celebrated artists of the ancient world. The building burned on July 21, 356 B.C., according to legend the same night that Alexander the Great was born.

About six years later, the building of a new temple to replace it was begun. The new building was surrounded by marble steps that led to a more than 400-foot-long terrace. Inside stood 127 60-foot marble columns and a statue of Artemis. Archeologists disagree as to whether the building had an open-air ceiling or was topped with wood tiles. The temple was largely destroyed by Ostrogoths in A.D. 262, and it was not until the 1860s that archeologists dug up the first of the ruins of the temple’s columns at the bottom of the Cayster River. Mausoleum at Halicarnassus Located in what is now southeastern Turkey, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was a tomb built by Artemisia for her husband, Mausolus, the king of Carnia in Asia Minor, after his death in 353 B.C. Mausolus was also Artemisia’s brother, and, according to legend, she was so grief-stricken at his passing that she mixed his ashes with water and drank them in addition to ordering the mausoleum’s construction.

The massive mausoleum was made entirely of white marble and is thought to have been about 135 feet high. The building’s complicated design, consisting of three rectangular layers, may have been an attempt to reconcile Lycian, Greek and Egyptian architectural styles. The first layer was a 60-foot base of steps, followed by a middle layer of 36 Ionic columns and a stepped, pyramid-shaped roof. At the very top of the roof lay the tomb, decorated by the work of four sculptors, and a 20-foot marble rendition of a four-horse chariot. The mausoleum was largely destroyed in an earthquake in the 13th century and its remains were later used in the fortification of a castle. In 1846, pieces of one of the mausoleum’s friezes were extracted from the castle and now reside, along with other relics from the Halicarnassus site, in London’s British Museum. Colossus of Rhodes The Colossus was an enormous bronze sculpture of the sun god Helios built by the Rhodians over 12 years in the third century B.C.

The city was the target of a Macedonian siege early in the fourth century B.C. and, according to legend, the Rhodians sold the tools and equipment left behind by the Macedonians to pay for the Colossus. Designed by the sculptor Chares, the statue was, at 100 feet, the tallest of the ancient world. It was completed around 280 B.C. and stood for sixty years until it was toppled in an earthquake. It was never rebuilt. Hundreds of years later, Arabs invaded Rhodes and sold the remains of the statue as scrap metal. Because of this, archeologists do not know much about the exact location of the statue or what it looked like. Most believe that it depicted the sun god standing naked while he lifted a torch with one hand and held a spear in the other. It was once believed that the statue stood with one leg on each side of a harbor, but most scholars now agree that the statue’s legs were most likely built close together to support its immense weight. Lighthouse of Alexandria The Lighthouse of Alexandria was located on a small island called Pharos near the city of Alexandria. Designed by the Greek architect Sostratos and completed around 270 B.C.

during the reign of Ptolemy II, the lighthouse helped to guide Nile River ships in and out of the city’s busy harbor. Archeologists have found ancient coins on which the lighthouse was depicted, and from them deduced that the structure had three tiers: a square level at the bottom, an octagonal level in the middle and a cylindrical top. Above that stood a 16-foot statue, most likely of Ptolemy II or Alexander the Great, for whom the city was named. Although estimates of the lighthouse’s height have ranged from 200 to 600 feet, most modern scholars believe it was about 380 feet tall. The lighthouse was gradually destroyed during a series of earthquakes from 956 to 1323. Some of its remains have since been discovered at the bottom of the Nile.

Tags Pictured: the 'real site' of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon - Telegraph Archaeology Pictured: the 'real site' of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon A British academic believes she has identified the precise spot of the elusive Hanging Gardens of Babylon - in one of the most dangerous places on earth Ancient texts tmay have revealled what could be the site of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon Photo: ALAMY Comments It is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World for which the location has for centuries remained elusive. Now, though, an academic from Oxford University believes she has solved one of the world’s last great archaeological mysteries by identifying the precise spot on which the Hanging Gardens of Babylon once stood. Dr Stephanie Dalley focused her search hundreds of miles north of the site of the ancient city of Babylon, now near Hillah, in central Iraq, to support her theory that the lush, elevated marvel was in fact built near the city of Ninevah, in the north of the country.

The believed site of the Hanging Garden of Babylon, in the foregound, on a mound near the ancient city of Ninevah, northern Iraq (CHANNEL FOUR) From piecing together clues from ancient texts, the academic has uncovered evidence that the gardens were in fact produced not by the Babylonians and their king Nebuchadnezzar, as has traditionally been assumed, but rather by their neighbours and foes, the Assyrians under their monarch, Sennacherib, around 2,700 years ago. Related Articles Home of Britain's earliest Neanderthals among heritage sites 'at risk' 10 Oct 2013 Sennacherib’s capital, Ninevah, is now near to Mosul, an area of Iraq still wracked by religious and ethnic violence, and although Dr Dalley travelled to the region earlier in the autumn, her team considered it too dangerous to visit the exact spot. However, using maps, she was able to direct a local film crew, with an armed escort, to the area, next to the ruins of the king’s palace, to survey it on her behalf.

Their footage showed a heavily a vast mound of dirt and rubble, which slopes down to an area of greenery and looks out onto modern housing and open countryside beyond. Dr Dalley said: “That’s the best place for it to be. It looks like a good place for a garden. “More research is now required at the site, but sadly I don’t think that will be gpossible in my lifetime. “My conviction that the gardens were in Ninevah remains unshaken.” The footage is the culmination of more than 20 years of research by Dr Dalley, from Oxford University’s Oriental Institute, to prove the correct location of the gardens. With no archaeological evidence ever found for them, many have dismissed the gardens as a myth. Knowledge of them is based on a few accounts, written hundreds of years after it was said to have been built by people who never saw it. One of these accounts claims that it was created by King Nebuchadnezzar, 600 years before the birth of Christ, at Babylon as a paradise in the desert for his wife who missed the green mountains of her home.

However, in the writings of the time - including Nebuchadnezzar’s own texts - there is not one single mention of any garden and more than a century of digging has turned up nothing. Dr Dalley directed her own research further north after decoding an ancient “cuneiform” text - a script from the Babylonian and Assyrian Empires - that led her to believe the gardens had been attributed to the wrong location, the wrong man and wrong period. The researcher - one of a handful of people in the world who can read cuneiform - came across a prism at the British Museum with cuneiform text which describes the life of Sennacherib; who lived 100 years before Nebuchadnezzar and reigned over an empire stretching from southern Turkey to modern day Israel, which describes a palace that he built and a garden that he built alongside calling them a “Wonder for all people”. Further support for the theory comes from a bas-relief, removed from Nineveh and brought to the British Museum, showing his palace complex and a garden featuring trees hanging in the air on terraces and plants suspended on arches. Because Ninevah is so far from Babylon, this evidence has previously been overlooked.

However, Dr Dalley has found that the Assyrians conquered Babylon and their capital became known as “New Babylon”, possibly accounting for the confusion over the names. Her research, which features in a Channel 4 documentary tonight, Finding Babylon’s Hanging Garden, has led her to establish that the gardens were built in a series of terraces, buit up like an amphitheatre, with a lake at the bottom. Water was bought to the city and surrounding areas via a 60 mile long canal. Evidence of this structure, 300ft wide and 60ft deep at some points, remains on the landscape and can be seen on now de-classified photographs taken by US spy satellites and analysed by Dr Dalley. The greenery would have required around 300 tonnes of water a day. An inscription found by the academic describes how this was achieved, with water from the lake was raised up onto the terraces by device using the same principles as the Archimedes’ screw - some four centuries before it was thought to have been invented. Ninevah features in the Old Testament as the city to which Jonah was sent by God to preach against its sinfulness.

The list of wonders was originally drawn up, however, as a guide to “must—see” sights for ancient Greek travellers in the eastern Mediterranean around the third century BC. Most were destroyed by earthquakes and only the Pyramid of Giza survives. Hanging Gardens Existed, but not in Babylon - History in the Headlines Hanging Gardens Existed, but not in Babylon May 14, 2013 By Christopher Klein Artist's representation of Hanging Gardens of Babylon Share this: Hanging Gardens Existed, but not in Babylon Author Hanging Gardens Existed, but not in Babylon URL Google Mythology shrouds each of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but none has been more mysterious than the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Archaeologists have never unearthed evidence of the soaring gardens, and scholars have questioned its very existence. Now, however, an Oxford University researcher says she knows why the Hanging Gardens of Babylon have proven so elusive. It’s because they weren’t in Babylon at all. Greek and Roman texts paint vivid pictures of the luxurious Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Amid the hot, arid landscape of ancient Babylon, lush vegetation cascaded like waterfalls down the terraces of the 75-foot-high garden.

Exotic plants, herbs and flowers dazzled the eyes, and fragrances wafted through the towering botanical oasis dotted with statues and tall stone columns. Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II was said to have constructed the luxurious Hanging Gardens in the sixth century B.C. as a gift to his wife, Amytis, who was homesick for the beautiful vegetation and mountains of her native Media (the northwestern part of modern-day Iran). To make the desert bloom, a marvel of irrigation engineering would have been required. Scientists have surmised that a system of pumps, waterwheels and cisterns would have been employed to raise and deliver the water from the nearby Euphrates River to the top of the gardens. The multiple Greek and Roman accounts of the Hanging Gardens, however, were second-hand–written centuries after the wonder’s alleged destruction. First-hand accounts did not exist, and for centuries, archaeologists have hunted in vain for the remains of the gardens. A group of German archaeologists even spent two decades at the turn of the 20th century trying to unearth signs of the ancient wonder without any luck.

The lack of any relics has caused skeptics to question whether the supposed desert wonder was just an “historical mirage.” However, Dr. Stephanie Dalley, an honorary research fellow and part of the Oriental Institute at England’s Oxford University, believes she has found evidence of the existence of the legendary Wonder of the Ancient World. In her soon-to-be-released book “The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced,” published by Oxford University Press, Dalley asserts that the reason why no traces of the Hanging Gardens have ever been found in Babylon is because they were never built there in the first place. Dalley, who has spent the better part of two decades researching the Hanging Gardens and studying ancient cuneiform texts, believes they were constructed 300 miles to the north of Babylon in Nineveh, the capital of the rival Assyrian empire. She asserts the Assyrian king Sennacherib, not Nebuchadnezzar II, built the marvel in the early seventh century B.C., a century earlier than scholars had previously thought.

According to Oxford University, Dalley, who is a scholar in ancient Mesopotamian languages, found evidence in new translations of the ancient texts of King Sennacherib that describe his own “unrivaled palace” and a “wonder for all peoples.” He also mentioned a bronze water-raising screw—similar to Archimedes’ screw developed four centuries later—that could have been used to irrigate the gardens. Recent excavations around Nineveh, near the modern-day Iraqi city of Mosul, have uncovered evidence of an extensive aqueduct system that delivered water from the mountains with the inscription: “Sennacherib king of the world…Over a great distance I had a watercourse directed to the environs of Nineveh.” Bas reliefs from the royal palace in Nineveh depicted a lush garden watered by an aqueduct, and unlike the flat surroundings of Babylon, the more rugged topography around the Assyrian capital would have made the logistical challenges in elevating water to the gardens far easier for an ancient civilization to overcome. Dalley explains that the reason for the confusion of the location of the gardens could be due to the Assyrian conquering of Babylon in 689 B.C.

Following the takeover, Nineveh was referred to as the “New Babylon,” and Sennacherib even renamed the city gates after those of Babylon’s entrances. Dalley’s assertions could debunk thoughts that the elusive ancient wonder was an “historical mirage,” but they could also prove that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are mislabeled and should truly be the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh. Tags Babylon - Ancient History Encyclopedia Babylon by Joshua J. Mark published on 28 April 2011 Babylon is the most famous city from ancient Mesopotamia whose ruins lie in modern-day Iraq 59 miles (94 kilometres) southwest of Baghdad. The name is thought to derive from bav-il or bav-ilim which, in the Akkadian language of the time, meant ‘Gate of God’ or `Gate of the Gods’ and `Babylon’ coming from Greek . The city owes its fame (or infamy) to the many references the Bible makes to it; all of which are unfavourable.

In the Book of Genesis, chapter 11, Babylon is featured in the story of The Tower of Babel and the Hebrews claimed the city was named for the confusion which ensued after God caused the people to begin speaking in different languages so they would not be able to complete their great tower to the heavens (the Hebrew word bavel means `confusion’). Babylon also appears prominently in the biblical books of Daniel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah, among others, and, most notably, The Book of Revelation. It was these biblical references which sparked interest in Mesopotamian archaeology and the expedition by the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey who first excavated the ruins of Babylon in 1899 CE. Outside of the sinful reputation given it by the Bible, the city is known for its impressive walls and buildings, its reputation as a great seat of learning and culture, the formation of a code of law which pre-dates the Mosaic Law, and for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon which were man-made terraces of flora and fauna, watered by machinery, which were cited by Herodotus as one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Advertisement The Old City & Hammurabi Babylon was founded at some point prior to the reign of Sargon of Akkad (also known as Sargon the Great ) who ruled from 2334-2279 BCE and claimed to have built temples at Babylon (other ancient sources seem to indicate that Sargon himself founded the city). At that time, Babylon seems to have been a minor city or perhaps a large port town on the Euphrates River at the point where it runs closest to the river Tigris. Whatever early role the city played in the ancient world is lost to modern-day scholars because the water level in the region has risen steadily over the centuries and the ruins of Old Babylon have become inaccessible. The ruins which were excavated by Koldewey, and are visible today, date only to well over one thousand years after the city was founded. The historian Paul Kriwaczek, among other scholars, claims it was established by the Amorites following the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur . This information, and any other pertaining to Old Babylon, comes to us today through artifacts which were carried away from the city after the Persian invasion or those which were created elsewhere.

Every ancient writer mentions Babylon with a tone of awe and reverence. The known history of Babylon, then, begins with its most famous king: Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE). This obscure Amorite prince ascended to the throne upon the abdication of his father, King Sin-Muballit, and fairly quickly transformed the city into one of the most powerful and influential in all of Mesopotamia. Hammurabi’s law codes are well known but are only one example of the policies he implemented to maintain peace and encourage prosperity. He enlarged and heightened the walls of the city, engaged in great public works which included opulent temples and canals, and made diplomacy an integral part of his administration. So successful was he in both diplomacy and war that, by 1755 BCE, he had united all of Mesopotamia under the rule of Babylon which, at this time, was the largest city in the world, and named his realm Babylonia .

The Assyrians, Chaldeans, & Nebuchadnezzar II Following Hammurabi’s death, his empire fell apart and Babylonia dwindled in size and scope until Babylon was easily sacked by the Hittites in 1595 BCE. The Kassites followed the Hittites and re-named the city Karanduniash. The meaning of this name is not clear. The Assyrians then followed the Kassites in dominating the region and, under the reign of the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib (reigned 705-681 BCE), Babylon revolted. Sennacherib had the city sacked, razed, and the ruins scattered as a lesson to others. His extreme measures were considered impious by the people generally and Sennacherib’s court specifically and he was soon after assassinated by his sons. His successor, Esarhaddon , re-built Babylon and returned it to its former glory. The city later rose in revolt against Ashurbanipal of Nineveh who besieged and defeated the city but did not damage it to any great extent and, in fact, personally purified Babylon of the evil spirits which were thought to have led to the trouble.

The reputation of the city as a center of learning and culture was already well established by this time. Remove Ads Advertisement After the fall of the Assyrian Empire, a Chaldean named Nabopolassar took the throne of Babylon and, through careful alliances, created the Neo-Babylonian Empire. His son, Nebuchadnezzar II (604-561 BCE), renovated the city so that it covered 900 hectares (2,200 acres) of land and boasted some the most beautiful and impressive structures in all of Mesopotamia. Every ancient writer to make mention of the city of Babylon, outside of those responsible for the stories in the Bible, does so with a tone of awe and reverence. Herodotus, for example, writes: The city stands on a broad plain, and is an exact square, a hundred and twenty stadia in length each way, so that the entire circuit is four hundred and eighty stadia. While such is its size, in magnificence there is no other city that approaches to it.

It is surrounded, in the first place, by a broad and deep moat, full of water, behind which rises a wall fifty royal cubits in width and two hundred in height. Although it is generally believed that Herodotus greatly exaggerated the dimensions of the city (and may never have actually visited the place himself) his description echoes the admiration of other writers of the time who recorded the magnificence of Babylon, and especially the great walls, as a wonder of the world. It was under Nebuchadnezzar II’s reign that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are said to have been constructed and the famous Ishtar Gate built.

The Hanging gardens are most explicitly described in a passage from Diodorus Siculus (90-30 BCE) in his work Bibliotheca Historica Book II.10: Remove Ads Advertisement There was also, because the acropolis , the Hanging Garden, as it is called, which was built, not by Semiramis , but by a later Syrian king to please one of his concubines; for she, they say, being a Persian by race and longing for the meadows of her mountains, asked the king to imitate, through the artifice of a planted garden, the distinctive landscape of Persia . The park extended four plethra on each side, and since the approach to the garden sloped like a hillside and the several parts of the structure rose from one another tier on tier, the appearance of the whole resembled that of a theatre. When the ascending terraces had been built, there had been constructed beneath them galleries which carried the entire weight of the planted garden and rose little by little one above the other along the approach; and the uppermost gallery, which was fifty cubits high, bore the highest surface of the park, which was made level with the circuit wall of the battlements of the city.

Furthermore, the walls, which had been constructed at great expense, were twenty-two feet thick, while the passage-way between each two walls was ten feet wide. The roofs of the galleries were covered over with beams of stone sixteen feet long, inclusive of the overlap, and four feet wide. The roof above these beams had first a layer of reeds laid in great quantities of bitumen, over this two courses of baked brick bonded by cement, and as a third layer a covering of lead, to the end that the moisture from the soil might not penetrate beneath. On all this again earth had been piled to a depth sufficient for the roots of the largest trees; and the ground, which was levelled off, was thickly planted with trees of every kind that, by their great size or any other charm, could give pleasure to beholder. And since the galleries, each projecting beyond another, all received the light, they contained many royal lodgings of every description; and there was one gallery which contained openings leading from the topmost surface and machines for supplying the garden with water, the machines raising the water in great abundance from the river, although no one outside could see it being done. Now this park, as I have said, was a later construction.

This part of Diodorus' work concerns the semi-mythical queen Semiramis (most probably based on the actual Assyrian queen Sammu-Ramat who reigned 811-806 BCE). His reference to "a later Syrian king" follows Herodotus' tendency of referring to Mesopotamia as ` Assyria '. Recent scholarship on the subject argues that the Hanging Gardens were never located at Babylon but were instead the creation Sennacherib at his capital of Nineveh. The historian Christopher Scarre writes: Sennacherib’s palace [at Nineveh] had all the usual accoutrements of a major Assyrian residence: colossal guardian figures and impressively carved stone reliefs (over 2,000 sculptured slabs in 71 rooms). Its gardens, too, were exceptional. Recent research by British Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley has suggested that these were the famous Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Later writers placed the Hanging Gardens at Babylon, but extensive research has failed to find any trace of them. Sennacherib’s proud account of the palace gardens he created at Nineveh fits that of the Hanging Gardens in several significant details (231).

This period in which the Hanging Gardens were allegedly built was also the time of the Babylonian Exile of the Jews and the period in which the Babylonian Talmud was written. The Euphrates River divided the city in two between an `old’ and a `new’ city with the Temple of Marduk and the great towering ziggurat in the center. Streets and avenues were widened to better accommodate the yearly processional of the statue of the great god Marduk in the journey from his home temple in the city to the New Year Festival Temple outside the Ishtar Gate. The Persian Conquest & Babylon's Decline The Neo-Babylonian Empire continued after the death of Nebuchadnezzar II and Babylon continued to play an important role in the region under the rule of Nabonidus and his successor Belshazzar (featured in the biblical Book of Daniel). In 539 BCE the empire fell to the Persians under Cyrus the Great at the Battle of Opis. Babylon’s walls were impregnable and so the Persians cleverly devised a plan whereby they diverted the course of the Euphrates River so that it fell to a manageable depth.

While the residents of the city were distracted by one of their great religious feast days, the Persian army waded the river and marched under the walls of Babylon unnoticed. It was claimed the city was taken without a fight although documents of the time indicate that repairs had to be made to the walls and some sections of the city and so perhaps the action was not as effortless as the Persian account maintained. Under Persian rule, Babylon flourished as a center of art and education. Cyrus and his successors held the city in great regard and made it the administrative capital of their empire (although at one point the Persian emperor Xerxes felt obliged to lay siege to the city after another revolt). Babylonian mathematics, cosmology, and astronomy were highly respected and it is thought that Thales of Miletus (known as the first western philosopher) may have studied there and that Pythagoras developed his famous mathematical theorem based upon a Babylonian model. When, after two hundred years, the Persian Empire fell to Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, he also gave great reverence to the city, ordering his men not to damage the buildings nor molest the inhabitants.

The historian Stephen Bertman writes, “Before his death, Alexander the Great ordered the superstructure of Babylon’s ziggurat pulled down in order that it might be rebuilt with greater splendor. But he never lived to bring his project to completion. Over the centuries, its scattered bricks have been cannibalized by peasants to fulfill humbler dreams. All that is left of the fabled Tower of Babel is the bed of a swampy pond.” After Alexander’s death at Babylon, his successors (known as `The Diadochi’, Greek for `successors’) fought over his empire generally and the city specifically to the point where the residents fled for their safety (or, according to one ancient report, were re-located). By the time the Parthian Empire ruled the region in 141 BCE Babylon was deserted and forgotten. The city steadily fell into ruin and, even during a brief revival under the Sassanid Persians, never approached its former greatness. In the Muslim conquest of the land in 650 CE whatever remained of Babylon was swept away and, in time, was buried beneath the sands. In the 17th and 18th centuries CE European travelers began to explore the area and return home with various artifacts.

These cuneiform blocks and statues led to an increased interest in the region and, by the 19th century CE, an interest in biblical archaeology drew men like Robert Koldewey who uncovered the ruins of the once great city of the Gate of the Gods. About the Author Searching for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon | Ancient Origins 25 November, 2013 - 04:50 aprilholloway Searching for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (Read the article on one page) The real location of the elusive Hanging Gardens of Babylon has eluded researchers for centuries. It is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World whose location is still unknown, yet despite a plethora of studies claiming to know the answer, there is still no consensus among historians and experts as to where this ancient wonder once stood. However, research conducted in November, 2013 by an Oxford University academic claimed to finally hold the answer. The most commonly held belief in scientific circles is that the ancient city and hanging gardens was constructed by the Babylonians under the leadership of king Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled between 605 and 562 BC.

He is reported to have constructed the gardens to please his homesick wife Amytis of Media, who longed for the plants of her homeland. However, Dr Stephanie Dalley, from Oxford University’s Oriental Institute, has spent the last two decades piecing together clues from ancient texts and decoding cuneiform text, and now believes she has come up with the true location of the Hanging Gardens. According to Dalley, the gardens were not built by the Babylonians at all, but by their neighbours and archenemies, the Assyrians, under their monarch Sennacherib. Dalley is one of only a handful of people in the world who can read cuneiform text and one of the clues that led her to her theory was a prism at the British Museum with cuneiform text describing the life of Sennacherib, who ruled over an empire stretching from southern Turkey to modern day Israel. The text describes a palace and garden that he built that was a “wonder for all people”.

Further support for the theory comes from a bas-relief, removed from Nineveh in northern Iraq and brought to the British Museum, showing Sennacherib’s palace complex and a garden featuring trees hanging in the air on terraces and plants suspended on arches. Dalley believes that the famous hanging gardens were located near the city of Ninevah and were built in a series of terraces, built up like an amphitheatre with a lake at the bottom. Because Ninevah is so far from Babylon, evidence pointing to this region as the real location of the gardens has previously been overlooked. However, Dr Dalley found that when the Assyrians conquered Babylon, their capital became known as “New Babylon”, possibly accounting for the confusion over the names. Unfortunately, the high level of religious and ethnic violence currently plaguing that region around Nineveh means that Dalley has not been able to go there to find the proof she needs to confirm her theory. However, she directed a local film crew to go there and survey a specific area on her behalf. Their footage shows a huge mound of dirt and rubble, which slopes down to an area of greenery.

Dalley is desperately trying to find a way to excavate the site but she believes that the violence in the region may make it impossible. “More research is required at the site, but sadly I don’t think that will be possible in my lifetime,” said Dalley. However, she added that her conviction that the gardens were in Ninevah “remains unshaken.”

Question: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, would have been situated in which modern day country?
Answer: Iraq